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Shell-Shocked

Won't Somebody Please Take Out the Trash?

The garbage is piling up in New Delhi, India, because the city doesn’t have an adequate waste management system in place to handle the 8,800 tons of trash produced each day by its 13 million residents. The city manages to clear only 5,400 tons a day, and dumps most of the trash into open landfills, […]

Wounds in Our Salt

Forget underground storage for high-level nuclear wastes, says John Leivia, director of Strategic Environmental Technologies. Last week, his company proposed plans to inject thousands of canisters of plutonium into salt formations beneath the Gulf of Mexico. The announcement was a big surprise to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Department of Energy, which plan […]

You Dropped a Bomb on Me, Navy

Opposition to Navy bombing exercises on the island of Vieques in Puerto Rico is growing stronger as researchers on the island have found toxic levels of heavy metals in crabs, edible plants, and human hair. The Navy has been testing bombs and artillery shells on Vieques for the last six decades, and many islanders believe […]

A Leap and Boundaries

Interior Secretary Gale Norton said yesterday that the Bush administration would not try to change the status of federal lands set aside as national monuments by former President Bill Clinton. She added, however, that the boundaries of the new monuments might be adjusted and the administration might alter the rules governing commercial development within the […]

Chevy Suburban, Meet the Chrysler Suburb

DaimlerChrysler plans to start selling a four-wheel-drive vehicle that will make the largest family vehicles now on the road seem tiny — nay, minute — in comparison. The vehicle, dubbed the Unimog, will be 20 feet long and 9 feet 7 inches tall; the front seat is reached by a three-step ladder. It is almost […]

Still Fighting for a Clearcut Victory

Claiming they are ready to log in more sustainable ways, timber companies in Canada want Greenpeace to call off its international campaign against British Columbia forest products. Weyerhaeuser Vice President Linda Coady said she is hopeful all sides will have reached a basic agreement by March on which coastal lands in B.C. should be protected […]

Howling With Joy

Leaving intact protections for red wolves in North Carolina, the U.S. Supreme Court yesterday declined to hear a case in which two farmers in the state challenged the federal government’s right to impose endangered species rules on private landowners. The farmers and two counties sued the feds to nullify rules that provided for the reintroduction […]

To Summit All Up

South African officials announced yesterday that the next Earth Summit, to be held in Johannesburg in 2002, will focus on worldwide access to drinking water and safeguarding children. The summit — officially called the U.N. World Summit on Sustainable Development — has the modest agenda of reviewing progress since the 1992 Rio summit, looking at […]

This Is the Dawning of the Age of Aquariums

It would be illegal to dump a common aquarium algae in any body of water in California under a bill before the state legislature. Caulerpa taxifolia, once given away free as a decorative addition to aquariums, is now banned by the Noxious Weed Act in the U.S. — but it can still be purchased illegally […]